


Recompense

by cardinalrachelieu



Category: Origin (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, [their_fight_should've_gone_differently_and_i'm_mad_about_it.jpg]
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 18:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16959249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardinalrachelieu/pseuds/cardinalrachelieu
Summary: He combs backward through their days on this ship, tries to pinpoint the exact moment he lost her. Finding Lee, escaping Ring 10, drinking with the others, telling her about his brother—one by one, the memories turn sour. “How long?”“Shun—”“How long!?”His voice slams into the bulkheads, threatens to break the ship in two. Lana flinches, and a shock of guilt tears through his chest.It’s not her,he reminds himself.It’s not her.---or,the fight i wish they'd had





	Recompense

Sterile white veins pulse along the corridor walls, and Shun finally catches up to Lana. He grabs her by the hips, tackles her to the ground. She yelps and throws her arms out to catch herself, loses the gun in the process. It clatters angrily against the walkway, skids out of reach.

 _Good._ He’d rather do this with his own hands anyway.

Shun flips her over, yanks he to her feet, bends her backward over the railing. He wraps his fingers around her throat and squeezes, _hard_. She should’ve killed him when she had the chance.

Her mistake.

She struggles for breath, can’t find it. Her skin is cold under his palms—wrong. How did he not notice earlier? _How did he not notice?_ Shun squeezes harder, and he’s not sure what he hates her for more: the lie, or awakening his part of him again.

Lana wedges an arm up through his guard, violently twists to the side to break his hold. His wrist buckles, and she pries herself free, cracks him across the chin for good measure. He reels backward, tastes copper. She’s a better fighter than him—it’s obvious now that he’s trying to kill her.

So why doesn’t she just end it?

Shun smothers the thought and jabs at her midsection, feels a rib shatter beneath his knuckles. Lana screams and pins his arm against her side, drives her opposite palm into his shoulder socket until something tears. His vision crowds with black, and he grits his teeth, wills himself to stay conscious.

The pressure disappears, and when he peels his eyes open, Lana is staring at him, horrified. He doesn’t have time to think about why.

Shun swings his free arm as hard as he can, but she’s quick—blocks it before his fist can connect with her face. She kicks his shin out from under him, and the steel walkway bites into his kneecap. He groans, grabs for her ankle, pulls her back. His shoulder roars with pain, but he hangs on, doesn’t let her crawl away. If she gets the gun, it’s—

Lana rolls over, and a darkened barrel stops his fist mid-strike. He waits for the searing agony, the angry hot-cold pulsing of a fresh bullet wound. It never comes.

Lana gasps for breath—bleeding, desperate, exhausted—and pushes the gun closer to his face. He could take it from her if he tried.

He doesn’t.

Shun steps back, looks down at her, wishes she’d just shot him. Regret is such a potent, vicious thing. “This whole time it was you,” he says, hopes she’ll deny it.

She doesn’t.

He combs backward through their days on this ship, tries to pinpoint the exact moment he lost her. Finding Lee, escaping Ring 10, drinking with the others, telling her about his brother—one by one, the memories turn sour. “How long?”

“Shun—”

“ _How long!?_ ” His voice slams into the bulkheads, threatens to break the ship in two. Lana flinches, and a shock of guilt tears through his chest. _It’s not her,_ he reminds himself. _It’s not her._

She presses her lips together, stares up at him with glassy eyes. Her silence is its own kind of answer.

Shun leans forward, holds the words in his mouth until they taste bitter. “You _killed_ Lee—” His throat closes up before he can get the rest out. Disgust, betrayal, rage—it all blurs together. If he could, he would wipe last night from his memory. To think that he _invited_ her in—

“I’m sorry,” she finally whispers. It’s not enough.

Shun grinds his jaw, stands up to his full height, lets his muscles go slack. He’s done fighting, done caring. Let her kill him if she wants. It doesn’t matter anymore.

“I never meant for any of this to happen,” she says softly, a raw sort of honesty in the way her voice breaks. He almost wants to believe her.

Almost.

Grey-blue eyes latch onto his, and he’s violently reminded of the way she looked at him that way a handful of hours ago, trapped on the other side of an airlock. “I should’ve just let you die,” he mutters, and the words find their mark; a small, final victory.

He tilts his head back, closes his eyes, takes a last deep breath. Maybe it was always going to end this way. After all, people like him aren’t meant to have fresh starts.

The alien chokes out a phrase he doesn’t quite catch, but when he blinks Lana’s body back into focus, she’s surrendering the gun. “Take it,” she says.

He doesn’t trust his eyes, stares dumbly at her bowed form.

“Take it,” she says again, and the man he used to be reacts without hesitation.

Shun snatches the gun from her hands, aims at the center of her forehead. He slips his finger through the guard and starts to squeeze. _It’s not her,_ he reminds himself again. _It’s not her, it’s not her, it’s not— Wait._ Shun releases the trigger. “Get out of her.”

She stares at the walkway. “I can’t.”

Shun tightens his grip on the gun, keeps it pointed at her brow. “So help me, I will cut you out of her _myself_ ,” he hisses, lips barely moving enough to let the sounds through.

“Don’t you get it?” She gives a dry, mirthless laugh. “There is no _her_ anymore.”

Shun clenches his teeth, refuses to let this _thing_ manipulate him more than it already has. “Bullshit.”

The alien sighs. “My bond with Lana is… different than with the other one.” Her eyes glaze over, and the steady rush of wind drowns them both. “I’m unable to separate from her,” she adds quietly.

“No.” He shakes his head. “No, there has to be a way—”

“There’s not,” she says, drags her gaze back to his. “And the scans won’t stop until we’re… until I’m…”

She could’ve killed him and joined the others on the bridge, could’ve tried to survive a little longer, maybe could’ve even made it to Thea. “Why?” he rasps, tongue heavy. The selfish, sadistic part of him needs to know.

Not-Lana stares up at him, face empty, eyes dull. “There are some things worse than dying.”

The words burrow into him with cruel, devastating precision, and the truth he’s been denying rips a hole in the world: Despite what she is, despite what she’s done, he cares for her. And he hates himself for it.

Shun purses his lips. Abigail, Katie, Henri, Rey, Logan, Baum—if he doesn’t finish this, all of them will die. He executed dozens for Oyaji. Why should this be any harder? Is the creature not at least deserving of the fate? He looks down at Lana, weighs the six of their lives against the thought of putting one bullet in her skull.

He wishes she would yell or fight or even run. Maybe then he’d see her as a monster. Maybe then he’d be able to pull the trigger.

She closes her eyes, and Shun adjusts his stance, pushes the gun closer to her head. _There is no_ her _anymore._

What a foolish dream, to think Siren could truly give him a blank slate. As if three decades of drowning in blood could be erased by jumping to a new star system; as if Earth was the problem and not him. Shun threads his finger through the guard again, steadies his shaking hands. _It’s just a parasite,_ he tells himself. _Just a parasite, just a parasite, just a parasite._

The tension melts from Lana’s shoulders, and she gives the shallowest of nods, and _fuck—_

Not like this.

He won’t.

He _can’t_.

He’s not that person anymore. He’s not, he’s not, he’s _not._

Shun swallows a curse and slams the base of the grip into the back of her neck. She goes down hard, limbs sprawled over the side of the narrow walkway, brown curls splashed across her cut-up face. He doesn’t acknowledge the surge of relief when her chest continues to rise and fall.

Now what? How can he possibly explain this to the others? He’d scream if he had the breath for it.

 _“Shun? Lana?”_ A comms device crackles with Abigails voice, and he fishes the small brass box out of his pocket. _“If you’ve heard any of my messages, none of us are taking the probe off the ship.”_

The probe.

“So if you two wanna go, maybe we’ll see you on Thea.”

Shun turns back around, rests his eyes on Lana’s motionless body. Some choices are difficult, but not this one. He kneels down, sets the gun aside, and scoops her into his arms. Maybe the alien doesn’t deserve a clean slate, but then again, neither does he.

**Author's Note:**

> @ the 10 other ppl in this fandom: thx 4 reading my garbáge & pls come yell at me on [tumblr](http://yalenayardeen.tumblr.com) about these two star-crossed idiots


End file.
